Miami Caca
Election Season Is Fun and Occasionally Even Important

Beskin’s campaign manager said the flames on the flier were a regrettable mistake.

By Rebecca Wakefield

The election reality show season is upon us. You won’t have time to watch closely, so here are a few of the lowlights:

County Commission District 4: Sally Heyman vs. Jay Beskin

I love it when white people throw down. Rarely do the Anglos who would rule in districts hugging the coastline get as openly juvenile as contestants in most races involving schoolbooks or Gov’nor Dorrin Rolle, but they do have their moments.

This week, incumbent Sally Heyman, riding a righteous fit of anger over “being burned in effigy” on a campaign flier distributed by the Jay Beskin squad in North Miami Beach, got her opportunity to hit her challenger back. A Heyman campaign supporter noticed that on August 10 a judge granted a $277,991.14 foreclosure judgment against Beskin’s Aventura condominium. Since Beskin had, on August 11, loaned his campaign $50,000, she naturally wondered how he could come up with 50-large for campaign expenses and yet not make his condo payments. “If his condo is his asset [as listed in financial filings] and it’s in foreclosure, what could you borrow against?” she asked me, grinning through the phone.

As the vagaries of assets and liabilities are a mystery to me, I called Beskin. “So now she’s going to try to trash me?” he asked. “We have gone head to head, but I’ve kept it on the issues. She’s making it personal.”

Yes, yes, how unsavory. After we got through the customary “this is a non-issue” pleasantries, Beskin explained that it was “a bit of a cash flow issue.” He said he hadn’t been working full-time as an attorney for the past year, so his income took a hit, while condo assessments and homeowner’s insurance went up. “It isn’t fun, but you deal with it,” he said.

Beskin, a former Aventura city commissioner, hastened to add that as of this week, he was able to get things straightened out with the mortgage company and he expects the foreclosure to be dismissed soon. As for the $50,000, he took out a personal loan to fund his campaign. “I don’t think voters care about that as much as they do about issues that make their lives easier,” he opined. “But maybe we should start questioning her finances. How in the world does someone with [a disclosed annual income of] $16,000 to $18,000 drive a BMW?”

I wondered that too. Heyman said the BMW is a leased county car, one of the many perks of being a county commissioner. “It’s cheaper than some of the cars other commissioners drive,” she said. “I do pay taxes on it.”

Heyman professed a deep upset at the “Shame on You Sally Heyman” flier Beskin supporters circulated with her picture partially obscured by flames. “In 10 campaigns, this is the first time I ever felt I had a [personal] opponent,” she said. “Obviously, it’s going to get uglier.”

Beskin campaign manager Jay Homnick said the flames on the flier were a regrettable mistake. He was trying to imply burning cheeks, to go with the shame rhetoric, but went too far. He said the campaign is now back on target, airing commercials criticizing Heyman for allowing the library in Aventura to sit empty for a year after damage from Hurricane Wilma and other “images of county dysfunction.”

School Board District 6: Agustin Barrera vs. Manny Anon

A few weeks ago, I wrote a big honking story about School Board member Evelyn Greer’s sudden interest in selling school district land to pay for an affordable housing fund for teachers. The main points of the piece were that Greer overstepped her role as a policymaker to manipulate the bureaucratic process and that her political interests were far too entwined with the economic ones of her family, who is in the affordable housing business.

Greer and husband Bruce donated $1,000 to the re-election campaign of School Board colleague Agustin Barrera in April. Greer’s board aide, Leslie Bowe, contributed $250. The Greers then gave at least another $5,000 through their various development companies on June 29. Worth noting, the contributions were made just a little over a week after the first meeting of the school district’s affordable housing task force meeting at which Barrera nominated Greer as chairwoman.

Did Greer funnel this money to Barrera to counter the influence of Barrera’s estranged brother-in-law Ralph Arza, as she told the Herald’s Matthew Pinzur? Is Greer merely being smart in attempting to build a political coalition of five like minds on the board? Or, as some uncharitable critics have suggested to me, did the Greer family hope to gain in some way from her affordable housing proposal?

I don’t know, although probably all three factors played some role. What concerns me more is some of the other contributors to Barrera’s campaign, like Shoma Homes and other developers from the unscrupulous end of the donating pool. Also, it bothers me that he hedged on Vamos a Cuba. Barrera voted the right way in April, to allow the district’s process in deciding whether to remove the controversial book to take its natural course. But after unknown Manny Anon was propped up to run against him, he voted to ban the book.

The Blogosphere vs. Everyone

Like most voters, I know nothing about judges. I generally use a formula only slightly less random than eeney-meeney-miney-moe. Female candidates rank highest, followed by candidates of African descent (American or Hispanic), then Anglo or Hispanic men. My strategy is based on the belief that women and minorities have more empathy and this could come in handy when eventually my day in court comes. The problem with this method is there’s no reward for true merit, only for taking advantage of the mindset of uninformed layabouts like myself.

There are better ways. One is to get a group of defense attorneys and prosecutors drunk and then play a word association game, such as “Judge Iglesias?” “Pederast.” I believe this is how the Dade County Bar Association poll is done, but it’s possible I’ve been misinformed.

Another pathway to better voting is to spend an afternoon reading the blogs of people who are obsessed with judges — i.e., lawyers. A fun one that focuses on all that occurs inside the Richard E. Gerstein Justice building is http://justicebuilding.blogspot.com.  The site, run by a maverick calling himself Rumpole of the Bailey, offers endorsements, critiques, debate and polls that can range from an opinion on a verdict to a survey of where inside the courthouse people have had sex.

This works for other races as well. The roundup of news posted on www.sayfiereview.com  is useful for scanning your way into a vague understanding of state politics, while the www.grapefruitblog.com  is useful more for the comments people post. For example, a recent Miami Herald article about state legislative candidate J.C. Planas getting opponents disqualified from his race attracted 104 comments, many from political operatives and legislators, judging by the high school-locker-room humor, paranoia and insider information. And Miami Caca (http://miamicaca.com)  is just as much fun in Spanglish.

Vote early, voto a menudo.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.

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